So I have this new contract gig, which I will be working a little while. It is on 34th st. I am up on the 21st floor, which affords some excellent views. I am 1 block west of the Empire State building and when I look east it fills the sky.

A life long weakness of mine is a tendency to at least initially trust that people are who they present themselves as. I still sometimes get suckered by bluster. A tough talking loudmouth who seemed to know everything recently crossed my radar. The subject was computers. I assumed anyone who talked like that had to have some skill. But I later I realized he was mostly a bluff, and a lot of his trash talking came from fear of being discovered.

There are moments when New York is so beautiful I fall in love with it. Tonight I was walking home and I went over the Manhattan bridge. I took these photos with my iPhone.

Apparently the last photo gave the impression that my office is all cubicles. I offer these to suggest it is somewhat open. I took these photos from my chair. There are 8 people in the tech team, and when we turn in our chairs we can all see each other.

Some photos of what I see out the windows here.

The very talented Kristy Caldwell has up some sketches for the upcoming play, Ajax In Iraq. Of her work process, she writes:

As you can imagine, it is easy to over-think a grand concept in your sketch pad and on your screen while forgetting that all the audience of your final result may know is the 6″ x4″ version. And this image is especially laden with potential pitfalls because Flux’s second play of the season, written by the venerable Ellen McLaughlin, involves a mash-up of these two things: Sophocles and the Iraq war.

A challenge, for sure. Two meetings later and hours spent combing through images from books, The New York Times (before the new subscription rates kicked in) and then double-checking those against image searches of what soldiers are actually carrying on their bodies at any given moment, I am knee-deep in the final composition. My primary concern is that the emotional upset be front and center. However the details may change, this won’t. I plan to build the image around the expression of the main character, and I plan to fix that overly fat finger on her right hand. Etc.

A friend sent me an email today about a proposed 28th Amendment that some people are apparently trying to promote. Here is a small excerpt:

 1. Term Limits. 12 years only, one of the possible options below..
  
   A. Two Six-year Senate terms
   B. Six Two-year House terms
   C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms
 
 2.  No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office. 
 
 3.  Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
  
 All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately.  All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. 
  
 4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
 
 5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.  Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

The proposal suggests term limits and some limits on salaries for Congress people.

I wrote this reply:

High salaries for politicians are an important guard against the kind of political culture where bribery becomes common. Compare the corrupt political culture of Italy to the non-corrupt culture of Germany, and note that the German politicians are paid better. More so, being underpaid is an important reason why corruption became embedded in the culture of nations like Nigeria.

I am pleased that the public is currently considering what remedies might come from changes to the fundamental arrangements under which all political activities in the US are currently organized. I assume we all have our own theories about what changes might be most useful at the current moment. Some people believe that term limits would be useful. The goal of term limits is to make politicians more responsive to the needs of the public. Would term limits actually serve this goal?

There is another way to proceed, and it was pointed out by my favorite Anti-Federalist, Melancton Smith, back in 1787. Smith focused on the issue of number, the ratio of each representative to the number represented. This is a ratio that must have profound effects, and yet it is rarely discussed. Imagine 3 countries, one in which every 1,000 people have a representative, and another where every 30,000 people have a representative, and another where every 701,149 people have a representative. Each of these countries is going to have a different political culture. In the first, those represented will be electing a friend from their neighborhood, in the second the representative, if they work very hard, can get to know all of the community leaders that they represent, and in the 3rd, there is no hope whatsoever of the representative knowing much about whom they represent. This 3rd example is the current case in the USA: 701,149 people per representative.

Congress regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth until it fixed the number of voting House members at 435 in 1911 (Wikipedia). Congress has an incentive to become less representative over time. This was explained by Melancton Smith in 1787: “If, therefore, this maxim be true, that men are unwilling to relinquish powers which they once possess, we are not to expect the House of Representatives will be inclined to enlarge the numbers.”

http://www.constitution.org/rc/rat_ny.htm#msmith02

To my way of thinking, Smith was the most intelligent of the Anti-Federalists, and he made the arguments that are most relevant today. There are problems that are naturally going to arise when a large nation tries to concentrate all decision making in a single, central place.

The USA will not solve its current problems by paying a little less to politicians, nor by insisting on term limits. Term limits will simply cause a few extra people to cycle through a position of governance that will continue to have the same high ratio of governed to representative. A more fundamental change is needed. Against pointless attempts to save a little money, Smith made this good point:

“It has been observed, by an honorable member, that the Eastern States insisted upon a small representation, on the principles of economy. This argument must have no weight in the mind of a considerate person. The difference of expense, between supporting a House of Representatives sufficiently numerous, and the present proposed one, would be twenty or thirty thousand dollars per annum. The man who would seriously object to this expense, to secure his liberties, does not deserve to enjoy them.”

Smith’s argument was that the ratio of those governed to representative should be low enough that people from the middle and lower classes should have some hope of being able to occassionally get elected and serve, but he noted that for this to happen the ratio needs to be very low, lower than what is practical for a large nation of millions. His argument suggests a solution that somehow involves the decentralization of decision making. Bloating Congress up to the point where it has 25,000 members is not practical, but decentralizing decision making allows high levels of representation, in groups that are small enough to be managable.

The problems of having a consolidated, centralized government have been with the USA since the beginning. This issue has been argued about more than most other issues, and it was a contributing factor to the one great civil war that the US suffered (consider the unhappy fact that the Dred Scott decision transformed all the free states into de facto slave states — even states like Vermont, where over 90% of the population opposed slavery, was forced to return escaped slaves, in the wake of the Dred Scott decision). The problems were foreseen at the beginning and have grown worse over time. This issue of centralization should be addressed at some point.

I’ll end this email with one more quote from Smith. He made the point that when a government has a high ratio of governed to representative, than the government will tend to be a government of the wealthy:

“Besides, the influence of the great will generally enable them to succeed in elections. It will be difficult to combine a district of country containing thirty or forty thousand inhabitants, — frame your election laws as you please, — in any other character, unless it be in one of conspicuous military, popular, civil, or legal talents. The great easily form associations; the poor and middling class form them with difficulty. If the elections be by plurality, — as probably will be the case in this state, — it is almost certain none but the great will be chosen, for they easily unite their interests: the common people will divide, and their divisions will be promoted by the others. There will be scarcely a chance of their uniting in any other but some great man, unless in some popular demagogue, who will probably be destitute of principle. A substantial yeoman, of sense and discernment, will hardly ever be chosen. From these remarks, it appears that the government will fall into the hands of the few and the great. This will be a government of oppression. I do not mean to declaim against the great, and charge them indiscriminately with want of principle and honesty. The same passions and prejudices govern all men. The circumstances in which men are placed in a great measure give a cast to the human character. Those in middling circumstances have less temptation; they are inclined by habit, and the company with whom they associate, to set bounds to their passions and appetites. If this is not sufficient, the want of means to gratify them will be a restraint: they are obliged to employ their time in their respective callings; hence the substantial yeomanry of the country are more temperate, of better morals, and less ambition, than the great. The latter do not feel for the poor and middling class; the reasons are obvious — they are not obliged to use the same pains and labor to procure property as the other. They feel not the inconveniences arising from the payment of small sums. The great consider themselves above the common people, entitled to more respect, do not associate with them; they fancy themselves to have a right of preeminence in every thing. In short, they possess the same feelings, and are under the influence of the same motives, as an hereditary nobility. I know the idea that such a distinction exists in this country is ridiculed by some; but I am not the less apprehensive of danger from their influence on this account. Such distinctions exist all the world over, have been taken notice of by all writers on free government, and are founded in the nature of things. It has been the principal care of free governments to guard against the encroachments of the great. Common observation and experience prove the existence of such distinctions. Will any one say that there dues not exist in this country the pride of family, of wealth, of talents, and that they do not command influence and respect among the common people? Congress, in their address to the inhabitants of the province of Quebec, in 1775, state this distinction in the following forcible words, quoted from the Marquis Beccaria: “In every human society there is an essay continually tending to confer on one part the height of power and happiness, and to reduce the other to the extreme of weakness and misery. The intent of good laws is to oppose this effort, and to diffuse their influence universally and equally.” We ought to guard against the government being placed in the hands of this class. They cannot have that sympathy with their constituents which is necessary to connect them closely to their interests. Being in the habit of profuse living, they will be profuse in the public expenses. They find no difficulty in paying their taxes, and therefore do not feel public burdens. Besides, if they govern, they will enjoy the emoluments of the government. The middling class, from their frugal habits, and feeling themselves the public burdens, will be careful how they increase them.”

Smith’s voice was important in getting New York state to elect an Anti-Federalist slate before the ratification of the Constitution. Of course, by the time they met, the sweep of events had changed the circumstances — other states had ratified the Constitution, and New York was faced with the sad choice of ratifying the Constitution with all its flaws, or being left out of the new Union.

I think the Constitution has many strengths, but it is important to listen to those who wisely pointed out its flaws.

We break up ourselves up into small pieces:

But not anymore. I’m tired of breaking myself into tiny little pieces. Of holding so much back. Of pretending that I only have good days.

I’ve been dating for more than half of my life. And dating has been, more than anything else, a state of constant compartmentalization. Of showing only the pre-packaged dating version of me. And dating me is healthier and prettier and happier than the whole me/real me. IRL I have good days and bad days. Just like everyone else.

I just got done re-reading Doris Lessing’s book, The Golden Notebook. Compartmentalization is a main theme of the book - the author (Anna, the main character, is an author, whose life is similar to Doris Lessing’s) doesn’t know how to manage her thoughts, so she divides them up into notebooks: her political thoughts go in the red notebook, her memories of Africa go into the black notebook, etc. Her thoughts about love are put into another notebook. She mixes fiction and non-fiction freely, and which is which? The boundaries blur, she wants clarity, she struggles for bright lines and clear boundaries. Finally she falls in love, with a man who is compartmentalized himself, part crazy and partly more lucid than most, and together they form a kind of synthesis, and they write the Golden Notebook together, a notebook where there is no more need for compartmentalization.

Since I got done reading the book, I’ve been wondering about that version of mental health: sanity as a resolution of the threads, the point of synthesis. Maybe that would work for me. Maybe not. I’ve grown used to being a different person for the different people that I know, and sometimes I find that exhausting, but it is hard to imagine what life would be like otherwise. danah boyd has written a lot about how collapsed contexts have changed the social lives of teens, but I think all of us have struggled with the odd newness that having an online presence can involve. The thing is, for the last few thousand years we’ve taken for granted that we can manage our social lives as a series of contexts. And for the most part, that is how we still manage ourselves. I go back and forth on the issue of how much online technologies will change the way we take context for granted. Will we ever get used to the idea that our co-workers and employers might know everything about our personal lives, or that an enemy from the distant past might suddenly show up and start making friends with recent lovers?

At the same time, I think most of us have the dream of some day being understood in our totality. I used to think I wanted to be famous, but now that I think about it, the real desire is to be widely understood. I recognize that as a utopian dream - the idea that a large number of strangers might some day really, truly understand me is the stuff of pure fantasy. But then, the dream that someday one particular person might truly understand me — that might also be utopian, but I’m not ready to let go of that particular fantasy.

I love stories that have happy endings:

Here’s her story (roughly): She’d been with the same guy for about a decade. She loved him and wanted to marry him and have his children. He knew this. And… nothing. Year after year she waited and the relationship went nowhere. All of her friends wanted her to dump the guy and move on (for many reasons) but she couldn’t/wouldn’t. I last saw her right after her 40th birthday. She’d recently gone to her doctor and been told she’d waited too long and was pretty devastated.

Well, sometime in the last year, the guy broke things off. And rather than chasing after him and begging him to stay, or waiting for him to change his mind, she immediately took herself to a fertility specialist and started IVF. She got pregnant on the first try. Now she’s blissfully happy and preparing for life as a single-parent. Which, I think, is pretty damn awesome. She’s getting to do what she always wanted, which is to be a mom.

Like I said, I love stories that have happy endings. But I think I admire even more stories that end unhappily, and of which endings the protagonist reconciles themselves. I do hope that some day technology allows everyone who wants a child to have a child. But I also think, even when that particular problem is solved, there will be other problems that people will need to wrestle with. Life will be full of hardship, always, and people need to have the courage to face that. I am guilty here of being the pot that calls the kettle black, but doesn’t some of the above story involve a bit self-imposed hardship? Why stay in a relationship so long, if it doesn’t give what one is looking for?

A good poll question would be “What is the longest you’ve ever gone knowing someone before they/you became attracted to you/them?” For me the answer would be 7 years. I met a woman in 1997 and thought she was reasonably attractive, but she didn’t especially take note of me till we met again in 2004, at which point she was suddenly attracted to me.

I can think of 3 times when people knew me awhile, and then, suddenly, took notice of me in a way that they had not noticed me before. Of course, part of that has to do with what kind of effort I make, in different years.

Check out the poll on this page: “What do you think? Is chemistry always there from the very start, or can it blossom and bloom after two people meet?”

I would say that these things (attraction) do not change suddenly. Two people who are not attracted this month are not suddenly going to be attracted to each other next month. But 2 years from now? Maybe.

Also, unlike the poll question, I do not think these things develop from continuous exposure. Instead, I think not seeing someone for 2 years is the most likely scenario whereby people suddenly are attracted to someone they were not previously attracted to.

My friend Konstantin is staying with me for a month. He’s been kind enough to build some shelves for me. I’m away this week, so he just sent me an email, where he writes:

Hey Lawrence, so I built that shelf out of metal pipes, its pretty much done, here is a snap shot of it. Because of the way the studs were and the light switch & pipes on the side I made a single wide shelf instead of two. Its quite sturdy, will never break, can be taken apart if you move and will probably be something you can pass on to your grandkids if it so happens.

This study says angry people want to redistribute income. This study is naive. I’ve noticed that some people deny that there is such a thing as Global Warming, and these people are also more optimistic about the future. And yet, what is their optimism based on? It is purely delusional. They live in denial about the various harms that the environment has suffered over the last several thousand years, and so they have an easy time being optimistic about the future. Likewise, many of these same people live in denial about the various forms of social inequality that history records, and so these people tend not see any need for any kind of remedy. But all of their happiness and optimism is based on denial of reality. I’m also suspicious of the self-reported lack of anger. This is a group that tends to live in denial of everything bad, so even if they did get angry frequently, I assume they would not be aware of it. Self reported data always needs to be viewed with suspicion.

The data are broadly inconsistent with the standard belief in the social psychology literature that pro-capitalist and anti-redistributionist views are positively associated with racism.

I then explore an alternative hypothesis, showing that, compared to anti-redistributionists, strong redistributionists have about two to three times higher odds of reporting that in the prior seven days they were angry, mad at someone, outraged, sad, lonely, and had trouble shaking the blues. Similarly, anti-redistributionists had about two to four times higher odds of reporting being happy or at ease. Not only do redistributionists report more anger, but they report that their anger lasts longer. When asked about the last time they were angry, strong redistributionists were more than twice as likely as strong opponents of leveling to admit that they responded to their anger by plotting revenge. Last, both redistributionists and anti-capitalists expressed lower overall happiness, less happy marriages, and lower satisfaction with their financial situations and with their jobs or housework.

Further, in the 2002 and 2004 General Social Surveys anti-redistributionists were generally more likely to report altruistic behavior. In particular, those who opposed more government redistribution of income were much more likely to donate money to charities, religious organizations, and political candidates. The one sort of altruistic behavior that the redistributionists were more likely to engage in was giving money to a homeless person on the street.

Evidence from sixteen national representative samples from 1980 through 2004 tends to suggest that Social Dominance Orientation has been in part misconceived. In the United States, segments of the academic community seem to have reversed the relationship between pro-capitalism and income redistribution on the one hand, and racism and intolerance on the other. Those who support capitalism and oppose greater income redistribution tend to be better educated, to have higher family incomes, to be less traditionally racist, and to be less intolerant of unpopular groups. Those who oppose greater redistribution also tend to be more generous in donating to charities and more likely to engage in some other altruistic behavior. The academic assumption that anti-capitalism and opposition to income redistribution reflect an orientation toward social dominance seems unwarranted.

Konstantin is an old friend of Lark’s. She’s known both of us for 8 years but somehow he and I are only meeting now. I find it him to be very intelligent and able to discuss a wide range of topics, some of his interests being suggested by his blog. I’m pleased to say he is staying with me for a month.

My friend Johnny St Ours is staying at my place this week (even though I’m gone for the week). He is one of the most talented videographers that I know. Check out his stuff on Vimeo.

2 very different takes on how to react to other people’s opinion about your sex life:

Simone writes:

And, sure enough, there were some people who felt the need to tell me that my problem is that sex should never be separated from love and compassion. *sigh*

As always, I find that kind of crap tiresome. And yes, I called it crap. And tiresome. I know that sex that happens within a great and loving relationship can be wonderful. And sex that happens for the sole purpose of having awesome sex (with someone you don’t give a damn about) can also be wonderful.

Wonderful in a different way (than sex with someone you’re in love with).

But I’d never try to convince someone who only wants to have sex as part of a loving relationship that they should have casual sex. To each his own and all that.

Catherine writes:

As a woman, I’ve been socialized to believe that I should really focus on keeping my number low. How else will I survive the “How many people have you slept with?” conversation with a new partner? And why do we feel the need to have that conversation anyway? So, I guard my number. Like the Nano Puppy I had in middle school, I feed it and exercise it. I give my number the love and attention it deserves. And it’s always in the back of my mind. Now, should this be the case? That’s a conversation for another day, but for me, it just is what it is.

Back in 1993 I was absolutely head over heels for a girl who I was sort of with, briefly (before she ended it). By accident, when we were packing up to move from one place to another, I ended up with one of her tshirts. It smelled like her, and I wanted to keep the memory of her. I kept that t-shirt for many, many years. So I can relate to some of this:

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not judging. I’m in a glass house here. When considering writing this post, I started recounting all the crazy stuff to which I’ve admitted on this blog. Over the past 10 months, I’ve revealed a lot. Perhaps, I’m being a little too honest on here. Maybe I should keep some of this crazy to myself. Like the time I drove by my ex fiancé’s house drunk, or the time I stole a shirt from him right before I moved out and I currently keep it in my closet, or all about my baggage/trust issues where I want to check up on my partner by checking his phone for suspicious messages. There’s plenty more I have yet to reveal, like how when my ex and I broke up, I found out about some lies he told me and then I proceeded to go through every bank account, every email, every phone record, every little slip of paper I could find in our home, to try to find out the entire truth. I wanted to know everything there was to know. So yeah, I’ve done some crazy stuff.

Interesting. I just did the same thing, of year of work and then more work and then more work, 60 hours a week, sometimes 70 hours a week, and no social life at all. I’m just coming out of all that now, and trying to build a social life in New York City (I’ve been here almost 2 years now, but I’ve been working like crazy almost the whole time). I wonder how common that is?

As I started to get better, stronger, I started to go completely stir crazy and figured I might as well use the laptop to keep myself entertained. This was a long time ago. There really weren’t all that many entertaining things online. But there was match.com. And I was kinda desperate to start dating again. My workaholic lifestyle had taken its toll on my social life and it had been (at least) a year since my last date. So I got myself registered with match.com and within a week had found myself a new guy.

An interesting post about the blame-the-victim tendency. On a slightly different note, I was at the Queer Music Festival and one of the more interesting conversations that arose (at a follow up conversation the next night at Repop) was that the idea that we need to be more affirmative about our right to define ourselves. Maybe it is impossible to get free of all labels but we should at least be free to define our own labels. This was suggested in the context of the queer community, and some of my gay/lesbian friends were expressing regrets about the extent that the queer community allowed itself to be partitioned into ghettos by label: bear, butch, femme. The goal of the cultural revolution of the last 50 years was (surely at least in part) an honest reckoning with the fluidity of most people’s identities. We are more than labels.

We’ve made legitimate progress. Slaves were freed. The industrial revolution spawned a system for public education. Suffrage gained the right of political voice. The decimation of the male populace in two worlds wars forced women into the workplace. Separate but equal was determined to be essentially unequal. Today the potential for self-advancement regardless of gender, race or sexual preference is greater than ever.

So can anyone explain to me why social memes several hundred years out of date still permeate the id of our modern age?

Fuck that noise. Fuck racial/social/gender inequality.

Fuck Victoria, we are society. It’s made up of the thoughts we entertain, the ideals we embrace. And honestly, we can do better than this.

Define your own humanity: don’t simply accept what’s been handed to you. Understand your limits for the intent purpose of defying them; know your nature and grow beyond it. Every human being shares the miracle of individuality: you are a unique creature, a curious and irrepetitive blend of genes and circumstance. You owe the universe the obligation of exploring the fullness of self as payment for having been born. Anything else is societal imposition.

Seriously, fuck society. Let’s create our own ethos. Let’s level the playing field, eliminate the double standard, hold everyone equally accountable.

I like this post over at Women Are From Mars:

I’m not here to discuss the why of it, but instead what actually bothers me (and Simone): Boys are allowed to do this – the Blow Off. Instead of saying anything or doing anything, they just disappear. Or don’t text back. Or text back randomly. I already know this bothers Miss Esme, and Jess from City Girls World has dubbed the worst offender of the Blow Off the Ghost Man.

But fine. You know what? I’ll allow the Blow Off. OK? It can certainly be argued as a clear message that you’re no longer into this (for whatever reason). But… if you’re pulling a Blow Off, why not just go through with it?

Why send the random “hey what’s up how’s it going sorry I haven’t called” text?

Or, why call randomly for no real reason?

Or the “I swear I’ve just been busy, please don’t give up on me yet!” response when all we want, at this point, is our fucking Pyrex back.

I’m serious. I want to know why boys do that.

Until it is explained to me, I have a few theories:

They don’t want to be the asshole, and they feel guilty.
They don’t know yet if they want to blow you off, so they’re keeping you around on the back burner.

As for #1, let me explain it for you, if you haven’t already received this memo: You will be a bigger asshat if you blow us off later, after feigning interest.

#2? Another effing newsflash: Guess what? You are totally allowed to not know if you want to keep dating us. That is completely and utterly your prerogative.

…You are allowed to tell us you’re not interested. In this day and age, it is reeeediculously easy to send a text or an email that simply says you’re just that or you’d rather be friends. That is your choice, and even if we’re bummed? That isn’t your problem any more. Yes, we might be angry and upset – and if you’ve given us reason to think you were more interested than you were, that’s kind of a consequence of that behavior. Sorry – man up and deal with it, and maybe, in the future? Don’t spew bullshit you don’t mean. However, in general? People are allowed to lose interest. It just happens. If we’re upset about it, that’s for us to deal with if you’re up-front and tell us about it. Really.

In terms of the guys who start sending mixed messages, I think the guys all belong to 2 groups:

1.) clueless, flailing, disorganized, confused and immature (such an attractive combination!)

2.) game players who really enjoy manipulating women. For these gusy, it’s not even about the sex or the interest, it is purely an exercise in power.

I’ve seen this so many times, someone gets into a relationship and then fails to develop some other friendship, even though the possibility of that friendship is something that they mean to give great value to. And the offer of friendship never lasts forever — it might be there a year or two, but you can’t just put it on hold for 5 years and then expect it to still be there. I wonder about this a lot, why we give such priority to our romantic relationships. I’ve done it as much as anyone. And then the romance doesn’t work out, and then you look back on those years when you were unhappy but trying to make the relationship work, and you have to wonder about the friendships you could have invested time and energy with, and maybe that would have been more rewarding, over the long term?

This is well said:

Then there was H. She was smart, funny, grounded. She had beautiful, rockin’ tatts (that she still rocked at 34 – that was ground-breaking at the time (p.s. I’m seriously cringing at my 24-year-old self right now)). She still worked as a bartender to support her new but burgeoning massage therapist career, while also still working as McRockerPants’ tour manager when appropriate.

She had a conglomerate career; a non-traditional career path.

But she was clearly happy.

This blew my mind. I didn’t have to go the route that I thought I had to. I could do whatever I wanted.

I know this sounds small. But it wasn’t. And I think we were pretty close; we got along really well, and I think both looked forward to our Saturday nights together at the bar (I barbacked for her).

Yet… fast-forward to now… and here I was… seeing her for only the 4th time in over 3 years.

How did this happen?

Why did I spend so much effort keeping in touch with and “getting-to-know” McRockerPants … while giving so little effort keeping in touch with H.? Why could I not see what was important to me? Or, maybe more realistically, that that was important to me, too?

Why do we take friendships for granted? Why do we assume these people will be there “when we come back”?

H. certainly isn’t “there” anymore. I tried to reach out to her via facebook when I had this realization… and she never responded.

I blew it.

In the long run, even though I had less, in terms of literal time, of a relationship with H., I’m finding the loss of her friendship matters much more to me than the fact that my “relation-friendship” with McRockerPants is pretty close to extinct.

Or we could invest our work, instead of bad romances. I do that too, though my friends tell me I should not.

Such a sad story!

On Saturday, 2 April, 2011, my sister injected herself with an overdose of insulin. Her roommate found her unconscious in her room.

She has suffered from anorexia, depression, and anxiety for most of her life. In the last five years, she added bulimia to the mix. She has been in rehab twice.

She has also been running marathons and triathlons for the past decade. She always places in the top five, usually winning her age group.

The mind over the body is an incredible thing. It can be a terrible thing.

My mom asked me when the last time she was happy. I don’t know. She never found a way to love herself. Ever.

But even all of her unhappiness… it can never fill the void her absence will leave.

I never felt like she committed herself to getting better. I always felt like she was looking for a quick fix, whether that was rehab or religion. Or a boyfriend. I always said she needed to find a way to fix herself, that she just needed to finally put in the goddamn work. I never felt like she was committed to putting in the goddamn work.

Maybe she just couldn’t. Maybe I never understood.

I have to tell myself there is nothing we could have done, that we did what we could. She is was 28 years old. An adult. We tried. We did what we could. Her way-in-over-her-hear therapist (someone I swear my sister chose because the woman was in over her head and wouldn’t challenge her – but what do I know?) basically told us we couldn’t do anything. That we needed to figure out how not to put our shit, our worries, our concerns, on my sister.

The guy described here is working hard to manipulate the woman who is writing:

I was speechless. My palms were sweaty. My mouth was dry. I felt nauseated. I hated this e-mail. I hated everything about it. I hated that he had taken a week to respond to me. I hated how distant and mechanical it felt. I hated that he had just told me he was dating other people. And I hated that he still planned to join me at the theatre, despite that disclosure.

It’s not that he was dating other people. Of course he was. I’d assumed he was, and I’d be an idiot to think otherwise. It’s that he’d felt the need to tell me. I’d only ever told one person whom I was newly dating that I was dating other people. And that was to get him to back off. To tell him, without telling him, that I wasn’t that interested in him. And now, this had just been fed back to me. By someone I liked, or thought I liked.

And then much later:

He was there waiting when I arrived. He looked so handsome. Handsomer than I remembered him being. He had dressed for the theatre and looked so distinguished and charming. My stomach was turning somersaults as I entered the door and forced a smile upon my face. I figured he’d greet me with a kiss on the cheek, if anything.

I figured wrong.

He walked over, smiling, took me in his arms and kissed me. Really kissed me. It was hardly what I’d expected after basically being told he’s not that into me. I was flustered and, once again, confused.

I’d have to wonder, why would anyone ever give someone like that a 2nd chance? I understand that the guy is very handsome, but still, he’s intentionally inflicting mental suffering. And he’s going to continue doing so. And he probably enjoys doing it. Why give him the chance to continue? (Anyone who thinks he’s mixed signals were maybe just an accident is being ridiculously naïve.)

There is a range of disrespectful behavior that I used to find exciting in a mate, but which I no longer do. If my partner treated me disrespectfully, my friends would say, “Hey, that behavior is a red flag, a warning.” But I wanted to ignore the warnings. Drama was exciting. I think some of the excitement arose from the extent to which the other person’s recklessness let me off the hook for a whole range of things, and some of the excitement arose from the kind of intimacy that is offered by someone whose behavior is self-destructive — because that suggests that they could never live without you. They need you. But I find, none of that interests me anymore, neither the disrespect, nor the needing.

None of this appeals to me, nowadays:

There are certain things I can overlook in a relationship. Psychotic behavior. Rambling stories about the ex-boyfriend. Threatening me with an empty Heineken bottle. Having to be carried out of your best friend’s wedding because you drank 15 Jaeger shots and proceeded to vomit on every inch of carpeting in the reception hall. Rambling stories about how the ex-boyfriend liked your blowjobs. Erratic, almost irresponsible driving. Refusing to tip the paperboy because he “seems Mexican.” Throwing all my clothes out into the driveway because I was a half-hour late coming home, even though you knew I was tending to my sick aunt.

I also ended up working on New Year’s Eve, just like in the passage below. I worked all night, alone in the office, I actually slept under my desk, then worked all day the next day. And for what? I was fighting back against the burnout and the boredom that I felt with that job. Trying to make some progress on a project that was already a month late. But to what end, really? It’s important to me to be good at what I do, and to be seen as good at what I do. I think the lesson for me is that from now on I need to be more selective about what projects I take. If I only take the projects that interest me, or I only work short stints, then I probably won’t face burnout again.

Instead I found myself working on New Year’s Eve, later beating myself up for going out to dinner and movie that night instead of working on a regional story that no one would be reading until the morning anyway. Instead of allowing myself a well-deserved holiday yesterday or even a day off weekend day the day before, yesterday, I wrote three stories and wound up with more stories than I usually have in my publication on any given day.

Is it any surprise that I literally couldn’t drag myself out of bed this morning to write my second article of the day? Normally I would have already had that story in the can so I wouldn’t have anything to worry about, but I couldn’t muster the energy to do it last night. I, wait for it, actually was so burned out, I sat and watched an entire movie without a laptop in my hands. And I didn’t feel one bit guilty about it…until the last credits ran, and I realized I needed to put something up there the next morning.

Both my wrists felt broken all day today. The stories I was expecting to come in from others weren’t coming, yet I didn’t have it in me to push it. My second story wasn’t finished until almost 2 p.m. instead of 10 a.m. I didn’t chastise myself over it.

I can relate to this:

Not only am I hard on myself. But I don’t always take very good take of myself or my home. I forget that I deserve to live in a clean home, surrounded by stability and peace. So I go days just ignoring what’s around me. Eyes glued to my computer. Living off of whatever scraps of food I have in the kitchen and take out. Letting the sink pile up with dishes, the dirty clothes pile up in the closet, and the clutter overtake EVERYTHING.

What’s frightening about this chaos is that it sincerely upsets me. I look around and it causes me stress. And then I go back to whatever I’m working on. It functions, in a way, like my own special form of self-sabotage. Like me telling me that I don’t deserve a nice orderly life.

And then, other times, my apartment is spotless for months at a time. Because I can be a bit of a neat freak.

My situation is ridiculous because I have a very high level of quality to live up to. I’ve previously linked to photos of what the apartment looked like when the previous tenant lived here. The woman who lived here before me was an artist with remarkable taste and the place looked amazing while she was here. I look at those photos and I think, “Damn, it’s going to take some work to get this place looking that good.” Right now I have not even unpacked, I’ve got cardboard boxes everywhere.

I am pleased to say, the one part of my apartment that currently is in good condition is the kitchen. Last Saturday, for breakfast, I had the whole crew connected to Brooklyn Dry Goods come over. That was good times. Good people. Lots of food (2 dozen egss, 4 boxes of sausages, and Konstantin made for us traditional Russian ladkis. He grated the potatoes and we had it with sour cream — very good.) I really love the fact that so many cool people live on my street, either in my building or across the street in the Chocolate Factory. That everyone lives so close makes for casual get togethers, or late night work sessions (the night before the Brooklyn Dry Goods web shop launched, we worked till 4 AM, at my place, to get the code and the design right).